Fiba, basketball’s international governing body, has agreed multiple free-to-air rights deals in the Baltics and Eastern Europe for the 2021-2025 cycle.
New agreements were signed in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic, which all kicked in as the qualifiers for the 2023 Fiba Basketball World Cup got underway last week.
In the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, rights were retained by Fiba’s long-standing broadcast partner TV3, the prominent media company in the region.
In Poland, rights have been secured by public-service broadcaster TVP, which will show the national team’s games on its flagship TVP1 and TVP2 channels as well as its TVP Sport streaming service.
TVP will produce and distribute all of the home games for Poland in the qualifiers for both the World Cup and 2025 EuroBasket. They also have rights to broadcast additional games from these events, including all finals.
In the Czech Republic, Czech TV, the public-service broadcaster, has acquired rights for the national team competitions and will also produce each of the home games for the country’s qualifiers.
In addition to the qualifiers, the aforementioned broadcasters will show the 2022 Women’s World Cup and the men’s edition in 2023.
Fiba has concluded a host of rights deals in the past week with Eleven Sports in Italy, RTVE in Spain, Spark Sport in New Zealand and France Televisions.
This added to recent media rights tie-ups with ESPN in Brazil, Sportsnet in Canada and Nelonen Media in Finland earlier this month.
